Morris and Brown had asked for her DNA.
“Do I have your permission to call her?”
Instincts honed by Talia’s proven lack of trustworthiness almost choked him as he said, “Yes. But I’m pretty sure her battery’s dead. Her phone goes immediately to voice mail and the charger was here.”
“She can get another charger.” Talia’s dry response made him feel a little better. For no apparent reason. “And it’s also possible that she’s sending the line to voice mail when she sees who’s calling. Or maybe she has the phone off to conserve the battery. I’ll keep trying, just in case.”
“Thanks, sis.”
“How much cash does she have on her?”
When Talia had left at eighteen, she’d taken all of his money that she could get her hands on. Close to five hundred dollars.
“I gave her fifty on Saturday, as I do every week. I don’t know if she spends it all every week, or if she’s saved up. She hasn’t accessed our joint account.”
“You’re still keeping your name on everyone else’s accounts, huh?”
“She’s fifteen, Talia. And I also put money in that account for her. Anyway, the punk could have spotted her a thousand easy.”
“I’m sure the cops will find out from his parents if he did. Surely they’d know if he suddenly withdrew a thousand bucks.”
“Unless he got it selling drugs and then they won’t know.”
“You’re telling me she could be anywhere.”
“Yeah.”
“You need me to come home?”
Tanner had a flash of memory―Talia, back when her hair was still long and blond, sitting at the kitchen table with him and Thomas, laughing so hard she spit mashed potatoes on a bowl of peas....
“Not yet,” he said. “Hopefully she’ll be home tonight and I can tan her hide for putting us all through this.”
“Tanner?”
“Yeah?”
“I suggest you don’t touch a hair on her head. If you want her to speak to you once she turns eighteen, that is.”
He’d never hit Tatum. Ever. He’d used the words figuratively. But he’d slapped Talia once. He was seventeen at the time and she’d been ten and had been using words he’d only ever heard come out of his mother’s mouth when the woman was high on something and chasing her next lay.
Talia’s eyes had opened wide, filled with tears, but even then she’d been too tough to let them fall. He’d been more appalled at his action than she had. Had apologized over and over.
Clearly she’d never forgiven him.
CHAPTER SIX
“WE KNOW WHO you are, Tatum.” Sedona waited until they were seated in the Garden of Renewal, a professionally planted utopia on the grounds of The Lemonade Stand, designed with aesthetics, sound and scent in mind. The rock waterfall in the middle of the garden offered a comforting white noise that tuned out sounds from the world beyond.
“My brother found me and told you, didn’t he? And now you’re going to make me go home.”
“No. Someone reported you missing to the police. You’re all over the news.”
“Oh.”
“You didn’t think anyone would miss you?”
The girl’s head was bent as she leaned over, her elbows on her knees, hands on her arms, and rocked.
A defensive posture that was far too familiar to Sedona. She saw it a lot in her line of work.
“I didn’t think,” Tatum said. “At least, not about that part.”
“So tell me what you did think about.”
Tatum sat upright, her eyes glistening with tears. “I had to get away from him, Ms. Campbell. I was online this morning and read about The Lemonade Stand on someone’s Facebook page. I knew I’d probably only have one chance to get here, so I grabbed my purse and left. I didn’t even bring my retainer.”
She was watching and listening for the “tells” because she didn’t have much time.
“Had to get away from whom?”
“My brother. I was off school today and he was going to be out working so I thought it was my chance.”
“What about your parents? Have you talked to them about your brother? Won’t they help you?”
“Tanner’s my guardian. He’s my brother. Our mother took off when I was five. She gave Tanner custody of all three of us kids. He always said that was the one decent thing she did for us before she left. Otherwise, we’d have been split up.”
Okay. Unexpected. Sedona slowed her mind down, reassessing.
“What about your dad?”
“I have no idea who he is. My older sister, Talia, said he was a drug dealer, just like hers and our other brother, Thomas’s. Tanner wouldn’t say. I just know that we all four have different dads and none of them hung around. Tanner’s was pretty decent, I guess. He died when Tanner was little.”
“You have three older siblings?”
“Yeah.”
“And this Tanner, he’s the oldest?”
“Yeah.”
“You have a sister named Talia and that was the name on the ID you gave Lila when you first arrived.”
“Yeah. It was hers. I found it in some stuff she left behind.”
“So she’s gone, too?”
“She’s a stripper in Vegas and Tanner won’t let me see her. Like he’s afraid I’m going to get stripper cooties or something.”
A picture of a drowning man began to form in Sedona’s mind. A man desperate enough to use force to keep his youngest sibling in line as she tried to take control of her own life?
Right alongside that vision was a depiction of a young woman who was more alone than Sedona had ever been.
“So there’s you, Tanner and Talia. What about the fourth sibling?”
“Thomas. He’s in New York. Has some fancy job to do with money but I wouldn’t even recognize him if I saw him. He headed for college the fall after mom left and never came back. He had a scholarship to an Ivy League school back east.”
“How old were you then?”
The gorgeous teenager shrugged her slumped shoulders. “Maybe five.”
“Do you and Thomas ever talk?” Just how isolated was this girl?
“Sometimes. When Tanner makes me. I mean, I don’t really know the guy, you know? We had a druggie mother in common and that’s about it.”
“But Thomas calls?”
“Maybe like on Christmas or something. Mostly Tanner calls him. Sometimes he answers and sometimes he doesn’t. Tanner leaves messages. Thomas doesn’t return them.”
No hope of support there.
“Are any of your siblings married?”
Was there any family that could take this girl? To keep her out of the system?
“Nope. And if Tanner has his way, I won’t ever be married, either.”
Not liking the sound of that, Sedona made a mental note.
“So what makes Tanner angry with you?”